Lesson barn has some new ponies...
Jan. 4th, 2023 08:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickI rolled in to lesson today (in 60F January! Amazing!) and there were two horses (a buckskin mare and a chestnut gelding) in the ring, riderless, standing and hanging out as part of the acclimatization process. They were not part of the usual crew and I hadn't heard of any New Horse Acquisitions. So I was "Hey, what's up with the horses? And that buckskin mare looks... familiar. Have I seen her before?"
Two years ago, when we traveled to the Very Nice Indoor to avoid Monsoon Saturday... with kind lady and her horse? The Very Nice Indoor with the Pinnacle Footing? (I blogged about the outing here. Go read it.) While I didn't mention it, the horse owned by the kind lady was a buckskin mare of the stock persuasion. Reader, the buckskin mare standing in the ring was that same buckskin mare and apparently kind lady also sent along her pleasant red gelding as well, both to join the lesson program.
Naturally, I was all wtf. Seriously, what the fuck happened? Two years ago, kind lady and her horse were happily and productively working on their dressage shit in their absolutely gorgeous fucking indoor with fabulous footing. They were making good headway, even. I couldn't even find anything nasty to say about the pair, and I am GOOD about finding nasty comments to make.
How did kind lady's horse, her PERSONAL horse, the one she seemed genuinely fond of, the horse who had a double-sized box stall with a fancy carved-wood nameplate and a PORTRAIT hanging beside it, for the rare occasions during which she was not chillaxin' in her lovely board-fenced field, wind up in Lesson Horse Lyfe at my lesson barn?
Well, apparently kind lady's husband of thirty years fucking shot himself in the head this past fall. (We're rural folks here. When we shoot ourselves in the head, we don't... linger. We are generally successful about it.) Not a lotta warning on that front, so, yeah.
Apparently he suicided WHILE kind lady was riding (but not, like, in front of her or anything), which has kind of ruined horses for her? Like, that's the narrative. Kind lady offered the horses to my riding instructor for use in her program because she was done with horses. Instructor was "Are you sure you're done?" and kind lady was "Yes, I'm sure."
Fuck. That's just sad all 'round. I'm sad for kind lady and I'm sad for her horses (though Lesson Horse Lyfe isn't terrible) and I'm sad that apparently her husband felt that suicide was the way to go. Dunno. It's just a ton of suck falling on someone I've only ever experienced as genuinely nice and kind.
Also kind lady is now waiting tables at Local Very Fancy Resort where the tips are quite good. I know they're quite good because my cousin Heather's husband used to wait tables there before he got his somme certification (has to do with wines). In my experience, one doesn't wait tables to deal with grief, particularly. Waiting tables is more a thing people do because people need money.
But also kind lady's Very Nice Horse Property is not listed for sale. I'll keep an eye out for that, going forward, but as of now it's not listed and there was time -- months -- between untimely death and current date, to get the property listed.
Courthouse records for the county in question are not open-access, so I can't check out judgments and stuff without driving over there during work hours and stuff, so that's a no-go. It's not that important to me.
But anyway, I guess my point here is that even when people have lives that look like everything is going great, sometimes things are not going great and/or can turn to shit in the blink of an eye.
I'm sorry, kind lady. I wish things had gone differently for you.
Two years ago, when we traveled to the Very Nice Indoor to avoid Monsoon Saturday... with kind lady and her horse? The Very Nice Indoor with the Pinnacle Footing? (I blogged about the outing here. Go read it.) While I didn't mention it, the horse owned by the kind lady was a buckskin mare of the stock persuasion. Reader, the buckskin mare standing in the ring was that same buckskin mare and apparently kind lady also sent along her pleasant red gelding as well, both to join the lesson program.
Naturally, I was all wtf. Seriously, what the fuck happened? Two years ago, kind lady and her horse were happily and productively working on their dressage shit in their absolutely gorgeous fucking indoor with fabulous footing. They were making good headway, even. I couldn't even find anything nasty to say about the pair, and I am GOOD about finding nasty comments to make.
How did kind lady's horse, her PERSONAL horse, the one she seemed genuinely fond of, the horse who had a double-sized box stall with a fancy carved-wood nameplate and a PORTRAIT hanging beside it, for the rare occasions during which she was not chillaxin' in her lovely board-fenced field, wind up in Lesson Horse Lyfe at my lesson barn?
Well, apparently kind lady's husband of thirty years fucking shot himself in the head this past fall. (We're rural folks here. When we shoot ourselves in the head, we don't... linger. We are generally successful about it.) Not a lotta warning on that front, so, yeah.
Apparently he suicided WHILE kind lady was riding (but not, like, in front of her or anything), which has kind of ruined horses for her? Like, that's the narrative. Kind lady offered the horses to my riding instructor for use in her program because she was done with horses. Instructor was "Are you sure you're done?" and kind lady was "Yes, I'm sure."
Fuck. That's just sad all 'round. I'm sad for kind lady and I'm sad for her horses (though Lesson Horse Lyfe isn't terrible) and I'm sad that apparently her husband felt that suicide was the way to go. Dunno. It's just a ton of suck falling on someone I've only ever experienced as genuinely nice and kind.
Also kind lady is now waiting tables at Local Very Fancy Resort where the tips are quite good. I know they're quite good because my cousin Heather's husband used to wait tables there before he got his somme certification (has to do with wines). In my experience, one doesn't wait tables to deal with grief, particularly. Waiting tables is more a thing people do because people need money.
But also kind lady's Very Nice Horse Property is not listed for sale. I'll keep an eye out for that, going forward, but as of now it's not listed and there was time -- months -- between untimely death and current date, to get the property listed.
Courthouse records for the county in question are not open-access, so I can't check out judgments and stuff without driving over there during work hours and stuff, so that's a no-go. It's not that important to me.
But anyway, I guess my point here is that even when people have lives that look like everything is going great, sometimes things are not going great and/or can turn to shit in the blink of an eye.
I'm sorry, kind lady. I wish things had gone differently for you.
